In October 2001, one month after the 9-11 attack, the Bush
administration forced through Congress an assault on civil liberties perversely
titled the “USA Patriot Act” (a surreal acronym for “Uniting & Strengthening
America Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism
Act"). Exploiting the new climate of fear, the Bush team claimed that a free
nation must give way to a secure nation. From the offices of a stolen
Presidency, we now have neither.

T he Patriot Act violates numerous constitutional rights,
such as the First Amendment right to free speech and freedom of assembly, the
Fourth Amendment right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizures, and
the Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to basic protections during criminal
proceedings. Among other things, the Bush administration arrogated to Executive
government the power to demand from librarians and bookstores lists of material
checked out or purchased, to undertake clandestine sneak and peek operations in
homes and workplaces, to monitor citizen communications by phone or the
Internet, and to detain foreigners indefinitely without legal counsel. In the
new Surveillance State, all government agencies can collect and share
information on anyone without judicial review, as the Executive office minimizes
the information citizens can collect on it and corporations through Freedom of
Information requests.

Perhaps most alarmingly, the Patriot Act created a new
legal category of “domestic terrorist” that is defined broadly enough to have a
chilling effect on free speech and political activity. Casting its dragnet
across the land, the Patriot Act states that the crime of “domestic terrorism”
occurs when a person’s action “appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a
civilian population [or] to influence the policy of government by intimidation
or coercion." Interestingly, through this new form of citizen coercion the
Patriot Act falls under its own definition and by logic should annul itself.
Instead, civil disobedience and virtually any protest activity meets the
definition of “terrorism” and could easily land one on the radar screen of the
state. In a democracy, the role of citizens precisely is to influence government
policy, but now this is considered coercion and so in Bushspeak, citizen =
terrorist.

In the era of the Patriot Act, the Executive branch of
government usurps ever more power, and thereby destroys the checks and balances
among the three branches of government crucial for the functioning of liberal
“democracy,” such as it is. When the Executive branch makes important legal and
policy decisions, Congress often is ignored and the courts are stripped of
independent review and decision-making power. Consequently, one can expect more
state repression and less accountability to Congress, the courts, and citizens
alike. As stated by the Center For Constitutional Rights in their “Erosion of
Civil Liberties in the Post 9/11 Era” report, “Executive Order and agency
regulations violate the laws of the U.S. Constitution, the laws of the United
States, and international and humanitarian law. As a result, the war on terror
is largely being conducted by Executive fiat and the constitutional liberties of
both citizens and non-citizens alike have been seriously compromised.”

“Shock and Awe” Attacks on Democracy

The Patriot Act set back the struggle for civil liberties
by decades, but it was only the opening volley of the Bush administration as it
launches another front in its war -- the blitzkrieg on democracy. Every bad
horror movie has its sequel, and it is no different in this case. Whereas the
Patriot Act was enacted to hurt foreigners and non-citizens the most (after
9-11, as many as 2,000 people, mostly foreigners, were rounded up and jailed for
months without formal charges and the right to legal counsel), its potential
successor is designed to come after American citizens themselves. The Son of
Patriot Act authorizes increases in domestic intelligence gathering,
surveillance, and law enforcement prerogatives that are unprecedented in U.S.
history.

In February 2003, a watchdog group called the Center for
Public Integrity reported that they obtained a leaked copy of draft legislation
– dated January 9, 2003 and stamped “confidential” -- the Bush administration
told the Senate Judiciary Committee did not exist. The legislation is titled the
“Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003,” or as it is unaffectionately known,
Patriot Act II. Like the opportunistic debut of Patriot Act I that exploited the
9-11 tragedy and widespread fears of additional terrorist attacks, Patriot Act
II reveals that the Bush administration was waiting for the next terrorist
attack or its war with Iraq to spring more booby trapped legislation on Congress
requiring emergency approval. If approved, Patriot Act II will plant dangerous
landmines in the path of every activist and nonconformist in the land. Many
members of Congress, however, are more circumspect and skeptical this time
around and are challenging further efforts to erode the Constitution.

In addition to increasing secret surveillance and requiring
even less juridical or political oversight of Executive power, Patriot Act II
creates new crimes and punishments for nonviolent activities. It calls for
fifteen new death penalty categories for “terrorism.” It authorizes secret
arrests for anyone involved with an organization deemed “terrorist” and it makes
giving donations to such a group a criminal action. As the government and sundry
industries involved in animal exploitation try to make the “terrorist” tag stick
to groups like PETA and Greenpeace, contributors to those organizations risk
being identified as “terrorists.” If Patriot Act II is passed, moreover, the
government will keep a DNA base on all “terrorists” and put their pictures and
personal information on a public Internet site. Most alarmingly, the government
could strip Americans of their citizenship and deport them if they belong or
give “material support” to a “terrorist” group.

These blood-curdling measures far transcend anything
established in Patriot Act I. They assail legal forms of protest and dissent,
while threatening to exile all the “terrorists” who belong to organizations like
PETA and Greenpeace. They subvert the very principles and logic of democracy in
the name of patriotism. With a broad brush, the state intends to paint a scarlet
letter on the forehead of every activist, who will then be treated like a common
sex offender once their picture is posted on the Internet. Laws previously
created to curb organized crime, hooliganism, and sex offenses are now being
used against animal rights and environmental activists, and these activists are
being demonized accordingly in a war of public perception.

Lobbying for Tyranny: The Texas Eco-Terrorism McBill

The assault on animal rights and environmental
organizations is happening from the top down and the bottom up, from both the
federal level and from new initiatives of individual states. The bills currently
debated in various states are the result of alliances between corporations and
professional lobbying groups, and their goal is to thwart any challenge to
industry rights to predation.

Deepening a dynamic as old as our nation, corporations are
finding new methods and resources to gain access to politicians and policy
makers. Powerful corporate lobbying organizations such as American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC) operate as think tanks and policy makers that charge
corporate clients thousands of dollars a year to join. Membership earns
corporations privileged access to policy meetings that invite their input in
drafting new laws and that bring them into direct contact with politicians.
Corporations and trade organizations can dictate laws and public policy while
hiding their tracks behind lobbying organizations. ALEC has been in the business
of corporate policy prostitution for 30 years and currently operates with an
annual budget of nearly six million dollars.

One key function of groups like ALEC is to draft model
bills that advance corporate interests and then float them in state legislatures
across the country. ALEC has drafted over 3,100 bills and passed 450 into law.
Not coincidentally, as they push legislation criminalizing dissent, ALEC has
over a dozen corporate clients involved in the prison industry and it has played
a crucial role in passing dozens of tough anti-crime bills such as the three
strike laws. The group has, consequently, helped to significantly increase
incarceration rates in the U.S. and it intends to add animal rights and
environmental activists to their client list.

This is obvious if one considers Texas House Bill 433, a
recent draft legislation that seeks to capitalize on federal efforts to
criminalize animal rights and environmental activism, and is being applied in
Pennsylvania, Maine, and New York, with other states to follow. Texas HB 433
involved a partnership with ALEC and the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance (USSA). The
USSA is a militantly anti-animal rights organization comprised of hunters,
fisherman, trappers, and “scientific wildlife management professionals.” They
defend their right to kill animals through grassroots coalition support, ballot
issue campaigning, and direct lobbying efforts. In August 2002, Rob Sexton of
USSA spoke to ALEC’s Task Force on Criminal Justice about the growing “terrorist
threat” of animal rights groups. In December 2002 the committee, headed by
Representative Ray Allen (R-Dallas), voted to accept HB 433, and in February
2003 the “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” was sent to the Texas
legislature.

As evidence of the interests sponsoring the bill, it
singles out animal and environmental industries alone for special legal
protection. HB 433 defines an “animal rights or ecological terrorist
organization” as “two or more persons organized for the purpose of supporting
any politically motivated activity intended to obstruct or deter any person from
participating in any activity involving animals or an activity involving natural
resources.”

Like the Patriot Act and its bastard offspring, the
language here is willfully vague, but the purpose is quite specific: to cripple
the animal rights and environmental movements by kneecapping their right to
dissent. With HB 433 and its numerous clones, you can be labeled a terrorist if
you leaflet a circus, protest an experimental lab, block a road to protect a
forest, or potentially impede industry profits in any fashion. Consequently,
following measures that have been attempted in Illinois and Missouri, the bill
defines another “terrorist” action to be photographing or videotaping animal
abuse in a facility such as factory farm or slaughterhouse. Thus, the terrorists
are not the monsters who club pigs to death with metal pipes, but rather the
activists, whistleblowers, or investigative reporters trying to document such
sadistic abuse. Like Patriot Act II, the Texas eco-terrorist bill aims to
criminalize donating money to any group smeared as terrorist, and requires that
all guilty individuals supply their names, addresses, and a recent photograph to
post on a public Internet database.

The USSA claims that they only seek to protect “wildlife”
interests and prevent illegal actions, and do not intend to inhibit the
constitutional rights of their critics. This lie is contradicted, first, by the
fact that Texas already has law in place to prohibit criminal actions against
property and, second, the bill unambiguously attacks basic rights. The real
agenda of the USSA clearly is not to stop actions that already are illegal, but
to criminalize any currently legal activities such as protests or demonstrations
that pose threats to their bloodletting.

After being slammed with criticism from outraged citizens
and groups including the Humane Society of the United States, the American
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Texas Humane Legislative
Network, the Sierra Club, and the American Civil Liberties Union, Allen backed
off HB 433. But he did not disavow his mission to help his friends in industry,
for he resubmitted a similar bill, HB 1516, which aims to escalate criminal
penalties for actions against animal and natural resource industries. Clearly,
animal rights and environmental activists are becoming a threat and corporate
exploiters will go to any lengths, including shredding the Constitution, to
protect their profits. Michael Ratner, a human rights lawyer and vice-president
of the Center for Constitutional Rights, claims that the Texas bill is
unprecedented in its draconian assault on freedom. “This is unique. Even under
the definition of domestic terrorism in the Patriot Act, you have to at least do
something that arguably threatens people’s lives, The definitional sections of
this legislation are so broad that they sweep within them basically every
environmental and animal rights organization in the country.”

Creeping Fascism

As the U.S. government moves closer to tyranny, it
collapses differences between foreign and domestic-born, between violent and
nonviolent protest, between terrorist and citizen, between the Al Qaeda and PETA.
Patriot Act I was just the first incursion in the new war against democracy, and
the enemy is quickly advancing on our positions.

We are all under attack -- not just the Animal Liberation
Front, but mainstream groups too – and it is important the diverse tendencies
within the movement respect one another’s place in the struggle and stay as
unified as possible. It is absurd to blame the ALF for the new state repression.
The industries and state are responding to the strength of the movement as a
whole, and mainstream groups like HSUS enjoy the credibility they do
specifically because the ideas and actions of more radical activists make theirs
seem more moderate in comparison.

The new concept of patriotism is marketed with as much
truth and logic as the packaging of happy meals. The government talks in
Orwellian doublespeak that defines peace as war and war as peace, (corporate)
criminality as principled moral action and principled moral action as criminal
behavior. But one needs to stop expecting truth from the government and begin to
see the state for what it really is – a professional bureaucracy that
monopolizes the means of violence and exists largely as a political tool for the
economic interests of ruling elites.

Just as the CIA’s purpose abroad has been to stop democracy
through any means necessary, so the FBI’s function at home always has been to
impede civil liberties and halt all radical movements dead in their tracks. The
stories of heroes fighting to protect American democracy against gangs, the
mafia, and sundry evil types are but the fables (always encouraged and
pre-approved by the FBI) of comic books and television shows. The reality is
otherwise. Since its inception the FBI has monitored domestic radicalism and
dissent, and it has jailed, beaten, murdered, and executed radicals in this
country. As evidenced by their infamous counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO)
during the 1960s and 1970s, the FBI has infiltrated, disrupted, and destroyed
radical social organizations, using techniques ranging from surveillance and
agent provocateurs to framing and murder. To the extent the animal rights,
environment, and anti-war movements grow strong, they will do it to us too.

The current climate is one of hysteria and intense
repression. National media conservatives routinely brand anti-war protestors as
traitors who should be jailed. Neil Cavuto of the conservative Fox News channel
that boasts “fair and balanced” coverage said to critics opposing the
“liberation of Iraq” that “you were sickening then; you are sickening now."
Cavato is a news anchor, not a commentator. The yellow-ribbon-tying masses
equate patriotism with blinkered jingoism, as Paleolithic “America, Love It or
Leave It” cries ring throughout the wasteland of talk radio. The shrill attack
on the Dixie Chicks (much of it organized by conservative media giant Clear
Channel Communications) for voicing their right to a viewpoint about President
Bush is a clear indicator of the barbaric impulses stirring in the nation,
irrationally oblivious to the fact that if the troops in Iraq were fighting for
anything, it was precisely for the Dixie Chicks to have the right of dissent. In
the current neo-McCarthyist climate, blacklisting is back in Hollywood as
outspoken critics of Bush’s war against Iraq (Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins,
Martin Sheen, and others) are being banned from events and suffer retaliation
for their views. For some time now, conservative organizations in academia have
been monitoring what “liberal” professors say about topics such as the war and
the Israel-Palestine conflict. Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney,
founded a new conservative group, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni,
which blasted dozens of professors for not showing sufficient patriotism after
9-11. Cheney considers college and university faculty to be “the weak link in
America’s response to the attack.”

Throughout the country people have been questioned by the
FBI for expressing anti-war views. In February 2003, a man was arrested in a New
York shopping mall for refusing to remove an anti-war T-shirt he was wearing,
following earlier events in 2002 where FBI and police questioned a college
student for an anti-Bush poster hanging in her dorm room and an activist who
refused to use stamps bearing the image of the American flag. Many such
outrageous incidents result from one person reporting another to authorities. In
2002, John Ashcroft tried to implement Operation TIPS (Terrorist Information
Prevention System) whereby individuals were asked to monitor their fellow
citizens and to report suspicious behavior. The program was not approved
ultimately, but its website claimed that over 200,000 tips have been filed since
September 11. Here as abroad, police monitor and gather intelligence on anti-war
demonstrations that are violently subdued. Delta airlines is the first to
institute a new computer system that conducts background checks on all
passengers and assigns them a threat level – red, yellow, or green – to
determine if they should be subjected to increased levels of security or even
refused boarding. The newly created Transportation Security Administration has
put over 1,000 citizens on a “no-fly” list, targeting “security risks” such as
Greenpeace activists.

Increasingly, animal rights activists are being brought
before grand juries and charged with violations of the RICO – Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations – Act of 1970 originally designed to fight
organized crime. Grand juries are nothing but repressive mechanisms of the state
that try to coerce activists to supply them with information under the penalty
of 18 months in prison for non-compliance. In the wake of the controversial
Fresno State “Revolutionary Environmentalism” conference in February 2003 that
featured former representatives and spokespersons of the ALF and Earth
Liberation Front, Virginia Tech’s Board of Visitors unanimously approved a
resolution to ban from the campus any group or individual that has advocated or
participated in “illegal acts of domestic violence or terrorism.” In a March
2003 presentation to Minnesota law enforcement officers and emergency management
officials, Capt. Bill Chandler noted that although his state harbored violent
neo-Nazi and right-wing militia groups like the Aryan Nation and Posse Comitatus,
ALF and ELF cells are the most dangerous threats and in fact are “more dangerous
in Minnesota than Al-Qaeda.”

During the same time, the FBI interrupted a University of
Minnesota meeting of the Student Organization for Animal Rights, asking for the
names of all members of the group during the past few years. On the same day in
late April 2003 the FBI raided the New Jersey office of the animal rights group
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) and the Seattle home of ALF-supporter Josh
Harper. In the UK and New Jersey, SHAC now has to contend with new “exclusion
zone” laws that severely inhibit their controversial protest tactics. And in May
2003, the FBI successfully subpoenaed Fresno State University for the tape of
the direct action panel that addressed a public audience of over 500 people. In
May 2003, the Rocky Mountain Animal Defense group, a mainstream animal advocacy
organization in Boulder, Colorado, learned that the University of Colorado
police had been monitoring them as suspected “extremists” and forwarded
documents about group activities (such as organizing yard sales) to Denver
police. At the May 16-17 World Agricultural Forum in St. Louis, Missouri, police
raided buildings housing activists and indiscriminately harassed and arrested
people. On a local cop chat room, one officer wrote salivated over the kind of
stun gun technology he desired to deal with the protestors: "I want that 220
Volt model that blows the teeth out of their head, just before they crap their
pants.”

These are dangerous times for speaking one’s mind and for
the preservation of civil liberties. If one analyzes the key defining criteria
of fascist regimes in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere -- such as militarism,
jingoism, national security obsessions, disdain for human rights, state
controlled mass media, disdain for human rights, and bogus elections – the
comparisons to the U.S. during the reign of the Patriot Act are uncanny. A
crucial element in fascist systems of domination is the loss of privacy. Clearly
we live in an advanced surveillance society – what some call the “transparent
society” -- where our every move and word is potentially monitored by computers,
cameras, recording devices, retinal and facial recognition systems, and
fingerprints. Some of these measures protect us from assault or identity theft,
but they also erode our privacy rights and supply personal information to
businesses and the government. Bush’s Total Information Awareness System is
already operating, as it develops special data mining techniques that collect
all the informational footprints an individual leaves behind, ranging from
doctor visits and travel plans to ATM withdrawals and email correspondence.
Reversing the logic of a sound justice system, everyone is now guilty until
proven innocent. In its war on Iraq, foreigners, and U.S. citizens, the Bush
administration resembles the “Pre-Crime” strike force in the movie Minority
Report, which aimed to preempt every potentially criminal thought before it
became an action.

The Patriot Act has not been around for long, but it has
already changed the political landscape. On March 24 2003, the Washington Post
reported that since 9-11, Attorney General John Ashcroft personally has signed
more than 170 “emergency foreign intelligence warrants,” three times the number
authorized in the preceding 23 years. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks,
the FBI and Justice Department have issued dozens of “national security letters”
that require business to turn over all electronic records on finances, phone
calls, emails, and other personal information. The story makes no mention of
surveillance on political activists, although from the government’s perspective
they may well fall under the vague category of “other national security threats”
Ashcroft and crew can target at will.

Congress will re-examine the Patriot Act in 2005, but by
then inertia may have ossified the new security culture and the “war on
terrorism” may still be considered the nation’s top priority. On May 8 2003,
Senator Orrin Hatch, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, tried to pass a
bill that would make the “anti-terrorism” powers of the Patriot Act permanent,
and thereby abolish the “sunshine” review of 2005. Fortunately, Hatch was firmly
checked by both Democrats and Republicans who are increasingly are alarmed about
the Bush agenda to erode civil liberties in the name of national security.
Still, a compromise bill passed in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 4 that expands
government power to use secret surveillance against “terrorist suspects.”

Beginning with the Reagan administration in the 1980s,
conservatives labored to roll back the clock on the environmental and social
gains of the 1960s, and the social welfare policies dating back to the 1930s.
Indeed, Bush’s time machine reaches back centuries, not decades, as he and his
cronies try to annul the Constitution itself. The Bush administration, corporate
lobbying groups like ALEC, and pro-violence organizations such as USSA are
exploiting fear and paranoia of terrorism for their own advantage in order to
justify their assault on freedom. They are shamelessly trying to gain from the
tragedy that took the lives of thousands of innocent civilians on 9-11 in order
to advance their agendas and protect their profits, while they shield themselves
from public scrutiny. Indeed, the current wave of tyranny is part of a larger
class war where Bush is subverting liberties, destroying social programs, and
creating tax programs to benefit the super-wealthy. Bush has quickly
distinguished himself as one of the most insane and dangerous individuals to
emerge in recent history and he is hell bent on resurrecting the glory days of
the Roman Empire to fulfill what he takes to be God’s plan for him and American
imperialist power. The differences between Osama Bin Laden’s terrorism and
George W. Bush’s terrorism are difficult to discern.

Clearly the stakes of fighting for animal rights are
higher, and this should prompt new reflection on tactics. We must not be afraid
or intimidated, but we also need to know our rights, or what is left of them,
and to exercise particularly high levels of security. Words define reality, so
we must resist being defined as violent and extremists. We must defend ourselves
rhetorically and philosophically, establishing a sharp distinction between
animal liberation, property destruction, protests, and demonstrations on one
side, and bona fide terrorism – the willful harming or taking of life for profit
or a political purpose – on the other side.

We need to spread awareness about the history and nature of
state repression, from the first Red Scare of the 1920s to COINTELPRO operations
in the 1960s and 1970s to today’s neo-McCarthyism. It is important to know what
murderous crimes the U.S. government has committed against radical individuals
and groups in the past in order to understand what it is capable of doing today.

Although the U.S. has every right to stop genuine
terrorists who pose threats to the nation and its citizens, it can and must do
this without violating the Constitution, basic human rights, and international
law. The state cannot hide its own crimes under the mantle of national security.
The government wants us to believe that security not liberty must be our
overriding national goals for the indefinite future. If we let them, they will
deploy this false dualism from now on to keep chipping away at our liberties
until none are left. There is one sign of hope, namely that across the U.S.,
over 100 towns and cities have passed resolutions against the Patriot Act.
Sometimes the opposition is merely symbolic, but in some cases such as Amherst,
Massachusetts, local governments are actually resisting federal mandates.

The war on freedom does not advance the war on (real)
terrorism one iota; it only creates more terror within our own borders. Liberty
is security: how secure do you feel knowing that Big Brother might be watching
you, that you might go to jail for protesting animal abuse, that Ashcroft alone
can authorize secret warrants for wiretaps and searches on you, and that all
power is being centralized in the executive branch and an increasingly few
number of corporations? How secure do you feel as the economy teeters on
disaster, as bombs rain down on Iraq, and as the blowback against the U.S. is
about to increase?

One Struggle, One Fight

If it is not already obvious, the struggle for animal
rights is intimately connected to the struggle for human rights -- for free
speech, freedom of association, freedom from search and seizure, and so on. The
animal rights community can no longer afford to be a single-issue movement, for
now in order to fight for animal rights we have to fight for democracy. It is
time once again to recall the profound saying by Pastor Martin Niemoller about
the fate of German citizens during the Nazi genocide: “First they came for the
Jews and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the
communists and I did not speak out – because I was a not communist. Then they
came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade
unionist. Then they came for me – and by then there was no one left to speak out
for me.”

Attacks on foreigners are preludes to attacks on U.S.
citizens, which are overtures to assaults on the animal rights community. In the
world of Bush, Ashcroft, Powell, the FBI, and corporate conglomerates, we are
all becoming aliens, foreigners to their pre-modern barbarity by virtue of our
very wish to uphold modern liberal values and constitutional rights. The war on
terrorism is a front for the war on democracy.

It is urgent, of course, that our movement create as many
vegans and animal rights activists as possible, and it is significant that
conservative Matthew Scully’s excellent book Dominion has reached a new
constituency among the Right. But while Scully – special assistant and senior
speechwriter to Bush – goes off to write more justifications for the warmongers
whose policies kill human and nonhuman animals alike, unaware of the palpable
contradiction between his ethics and economic policies and affiliations, we
ought to consider who our real allies are.

Instead of pandering to the likes of “compassionate
conservatives” the animal rights movement should forge alliances with other
peace and justice movements. If we want to grow in strength and numbers we need
to interface with current movements opposing patriarchy, racism, war, violence,
corporate globalization, environmental destruction, exploitation, injustice, and
prejudice of any kind.

All peace and justice movements have one foe in common –
capitalism and the pernicious effects of its profit logic and inherent disregard
for life. This means that we need to position animal rights as a progressive
social movement. As the animal rights community awakens from its political
slumbers, it needs to engage in a mutual education dialogue with progressive
movements. They can teach the animal rights community a few things about
capitalism and social injustice, and the animal rights community can educate
them about animal rights, the limitations of humanism, and the need to adopt a
vegan diet.